The FedEx man who came to my house today is lucky that he runs fast. If he’d have been any slower, I just might have caught him and slapped him for being stupid. I’m not picking on FedEx here today, especially since it’s the UPS man who is generally the target of my rage, but today is when it about put me over the edge.

Here’s my disclaimer… Allison is a light sleeper, so am I. I wish that we could both be like my hubby who can literally sleep though anything, but unfortunately we are not.

When Allison is napping during the day, we have a little sign that we hang on the front door that says, “Shh! Sweet Pea Sleepin’” and it has a cute little picture of peas in a pod.
Pretty self explanatory, huh? For most people, yes it is, but for the small percentage of the population who work for FedEx and UPS in the Dayton area, apparently this sign means nothing.

Actually I am starting to think that they do in fact see and understand the sign, but that they don’t care. Instead of complying with my request to be quiet, they ring the door bell, open the storm door, fling whatever package they have between the front door and the storm door, then slam the storm door shut with all the might before bolting for their trucks because they know that I am coming for them.

Seriously, does it take a rocket scientist to figure out that when the sign is up that the baby is sleeping and ringing the doorbell might not be the best option?

The real problem today is that I feel like crap and I too was actually sleeping before the doorbell rang and the dog freaked out barking because some little man was opening the storm door to leave the package. By the time I got down the stairs and opened the door, the man was already revving his engine and I swear smirking at me when I glared at him.

So now I have a special sign on the door addressed to any delivery drivers who approach my door asking the morons to not ring the doorbell.

Think it will work? I’m guessing it won’t, so I’ll go with plan B… Close the front door almost all the way, so that when the delivery man opens the storm door to drop off the package, Max (the 70-pound terrier) is right there waiting for his little delivery hand to enter my house, right about the time the aforementioned hand is within Max’s reach, I’ll call the dog off. Honestly this was an accident the first time it happened, but the mail man now knows to simply leave the box on the front porch, we’ll find it.

I believe it has finally happened. Allison has crossed that fine line between being an infant to being a full-fledged toddler. What makes me think that we’ve crossed over? Could it be that she is walking now? Or that she is learning how to express herself more? Or that she has preferences for toys and activities? No those are not the definitive factors for me; rather it came to me last night while in the darkness of her room I discovered that she has moved on from the innocuous spitting up that babies do to full-fledged grown-up vomit. Yep, chunks of grilled cheese sandwich mixed with carrots are what finally convinced me that my baby is no longer a baby.

We recently returned from 19 fabulous days in San Diego, so getting Allison back on the correct time zone typically takes a day or two. So last night about 30 minutes after I put her down to bed she started fussing. Jason and I figured she just wasn’t ready to sleep so we let her fuss for about 15 minutes when suddenly the fussing grew more agitated. Thinking she might be a little hungry or thirsty, I made a 4 ounce bottle and headed upstairs.

As soon as I opened her bedroom door I knew something was not right. There was an odd sweet smell filling the room. I couldn’t quite place it. So I innocently reach into the crib in the darkness to pick up Allison and soothe her back to sleep. Unfortunately I missed finding Allison and instead found the aforementioned chunks of her dinner all over the crib.

I called down to Jason that I was going to need some back-up and I reached for the light. My poor little pumpkin must have been laying on her tummy when she urped up her dinner. She had chunks of food all over her face, hair, eye lashes, ears and the two pacifiers that she was desperately clinging to. Not to mention it was all over the front of her jammies, the sheet, blanket and crib railing.

I asked Jason if he wanted to re-bathe Allison or change the sheets. Teetering near the bedroom door he sheepishly replied, “I guess I’ll take her.” I could sense that he might lose his dinner too and knowing how spaghetti sauce satins I told him to go start the bath while I stripped Allison naked and brought her to him.

As I changed the sheets and re-made the bed that’s when it hit me that my little pumpkin was growing up. Who knew that barf could be such a sentimental occurrence?

Allison may only be 13 months old but she has already flown across the country four times. Each trip takes two legs, so with round-trip flights, we’ve been through 16 take-offs and landings with this child. That also means we have been through 16 different flight crews for these adventures.

Have you ever heard the old adage that 100 atta-boys can be erased by one complaint? {That’s not exactly how it goes, but I am tired so hopefully you get my point} Well let me tell you my story about this one flight from Dallas to San Diego {American Airlines flight 1821 on June 3 in case your interested}Allison was tired, there is no doubt about it, we were about 2 hours past her bedtime and she was tired. However for those of you who know my child, she doesn’t like to miss a thing, so getting her to sleep on a semi-crowded airplane full of new faces was not going to be an easy task.

Okay so truth be told, Allison was screaming. She was not happy about being on that airplane, neither was I and neither was Jason. But there we were climbing to 30,000 feet and there was not a darn thing any of us could do about it. I was desperately trying to muzzle her screams without suffocating her and Jason was trying to keep me calm as my frustration with the child grew with each second. The passengers around us were giving us dirty looks, sighing out loud and getting agitated themselves. It’s not like we were just letting Allison scream we were rocking, singing, offering snacks and sippy cups, there were new toys being fished out of diaper bags and Tylenol and teething tables being doled out. We were trying and Allison was not cooperating.

The flight crew meandered up the aisle offering beverages to other passengers. As they approached our row, the flight attendant said, “Do you want me to warm a bottle for her?”

Now remember my child is 13 months old, but she only weighs 18 pounds. I realize that to some folks she looks a lot younger than she is, but she is one-year old and we had weaned her from the bottle.

I replied to the flight attendant, “No thank you, she doesn’t take a bottle any more.”

To which the flight attendant looked at me like I have four heads and barked, “Well what do you feed that child then?”

She’s lucky that I had a screaming child in my arms or else I might have stood up and slapped her for her attitude. She doesn’t know me or my child and had no business judging me for how or what I feed my daughter.

With that, I turned my back to her and continued trying to calm my child down. And she proceeded up the aisle without even offering Jason or me a drink. {which trust me, we both needed a good stiff one!}

So as the flight continued, Jason tried walking with Allison to get her to sleep, all to no avail. I got up to rescue Jason from the screaming and miracle upon miracle I was able to sway Allison to sleep. So in an attempt to not bother the other passengers anymore, I slipped into the back row of seats. About three minutes after I gingerly sat down with my sleeping child, my favorite flight attendant informs me that that row of seats had been blocked by the gate attendants and I needed to return to my assigned seat.

Once again she is lucky that I had a child in my arms or I probably would have punched her at this point. So I carefully returned to my assigned seat. By now I was full-on in tears. I was exhausted, frustrated and embarrassed because of the scene that the screaming baby caused {irrational I know, babies cry and people need to accept that!}. Jason asks why I moved so I told him what the flight attendant said to me. Jason turned around to give her the evil eye only to see her sprawled across the entire row of seats, that I was sitting in, with her bare feet propped up on the arm rest reading a magazine. What the hel! Was my only response at that point… Someone please tell me how I can get a job where I get paid to be a rude and then get to prop my stinky feet up and read a magazine, that’s one job that I know I could handle, I am a quick learner!

Needless to say we will be avoiding American Airlines at all costs from here on out.